Once More
by Bread
Summary: Giles tells the Slayer, the Witch, the Key and the Zeppo to move away and to start a new life where they could be normal again. New life in Normalville? Sure. Normal life in Normalville? Impossible. A BTVSSV crossover.


**  
Once More **

Chapter 1 – This Time of Year

What to do with super strength: 

1.) Lift things.  
2.) Become superhero and wear pretty costume.  
3.) Become Doublemeat Palace superemployee  
4.) Become circus freak.  
5.) Gather Spike's ashes and 

Willow took Buffy by surprise when she snatched the pen from behind her and added something to the notebook. The heading now read: "What to do with super strength that actually makes money." 

"That does sound like a better title," Buffy said, "More... cheery." 

"And practical," Willow added. 

"Definitely," Buffy said. She put down the notebook and sighed in defeat. "It's not going to work, Will." 

"Hey, hey, don't say that," Willow slid into the booth beside her and put an arm around her shoulders. "We're starting a new life in where we're headed. That's better than most things. That's something we should always be thankful for. And- and if you think about it hard enough, it's almost exciting, too." She nodded in that wide-eyed Willow manner. 

Buffy smiled a bit, but lost her smile just as soon. "Yeah, for you, maybe. You went to college. I didn't even last a year. This is like Doublemeat Palace goodness all over again. It's realizing that without somebody to use Mr. Pointy with, I'm just pretty much your average Joe. Jane. Joan. Oh my god, I'm Rambo." 

"Oh, stop it," Willow said. "You had some college. And you've got plenty of experience as a guidance counselor, not to mention the endless hours of preparing that Doublemeaty goodness. I'm- I'm sure you'll find a job." 

Buffy looked out the window. Dawn was outside, acting as Xander's extra eye as he parked the bus. Beyond them were... _Nothing,_ she thought. _There's nothing out there. Like there's nothing in here._ She lazily surveyed the waitress milling around, dropping off a serving of fries here and there. The place was empty, except for the two men near the door and a bunch of kids at the soda fountain. They were still well in between towns and, save for those people, she might have said that the place was like a ghost diner of some sort. _Or I want it to be..._ Buffy thought, rubbing her temples with her thumbs. "I keep-" 

Willow looked up from the menu. "What was that?" 

"I keep- I kept expecting this place to be haunted or something. I just can't believe I'm saying this, but I've- I've been half-wishing vamps would just suddenly turn up, you know, just so I'd feel... useful again." She had only felt this one time before, when her friends cast her out of the group because they thought she didn't know what she was doing anymore. It was like she had her legs kicked out from under her. She knew she'd only lasted this long because of her friends, and to tell her that they didn't need her, want her around, the emptiness inside her made her want to just sink into herself until she was just nothing. She remembered that Spike was the only one who knew what was right and believed in her then. He was the only one who cared. 

_Spike._ Buffy closed her eyes at the memory. It had already been two days since they had started off from what was left of Sunnydale, but she still felt the way she did that second she tore herself away from his side. She should have stayed with him. She should have stayed with him long before that. It was only then that she realized what she had done wrong. Xander's anger and disgust would have passed, Willow found out about Spike's change before anyone else and she had accepted it, and Dawn... Dawn loved Spike. Her little sister didn't have a soul, but she knew more about redemption and man's capacity for change than any of them. Buffy wanted to take back so much, to make so many things just go away for now. They had saved the world from ending, but why did she feel like it did anyway? 

"Oh, just give me something I can ki-" Buffy stopped in mid-sentence and looked up. "Did you say something, Will?" 

"Yeah," Willow answered, "ten minutes ago." 

"No, I thought I heard _some_thing." 

"You really don't need to go Slayer mode anymore, you know. There aren't many of our undead Americans friends anymore, and with all those other Slayers walking around..." Willow saw Buffy just look more depressed at the mention of the other Slayers and immediately regretted opening her mouth. "Or- or you can think about it as you know, freed-" She stopped when Buffy took her arm and shushed her. 

"Wha-" Willow started to say, but stopped on her own when she recognized that look in her friend's eyes. Sure enough, a second later, she heard a faint scream. She immediately started to slide out of the booth to let Buffy through, but before she could even fully stand, the Slayer was gone. 

"What's happening here?" Xander, with Dawn in tow, ran up to Willow who was hiding behind a small palm tree. 

"Therapy," was her only reply. 

"Well, glad to see she's still in top form," Xander shrugged. Dawn was finishing an ice cream cone and offered it to Willow. Together, the three unconcernedly watched the little blonde woman beat the crap out of a demon that looked like their dermatologically challenged friend Clem, only pinker. 

"Boy, you don't know how glad. I. Am. You. Came. Along," Buffy, who was holding the demon by his ears, kneed him in the stomach with every word. As a coup de grace, she yanked the demon back to his feet by his ears and then made him fly to the end of the curb with a kick. "That'd teach you not to... leave... your head?" To her surprise and confusion, the pink Clem skin of the demon's head was still in her hands. When she turned to look at the woman she saved, the woman immediately jumped to her feet and ran screaming to the other end of the street where, Buffy only noticed for the first time, a camera crew was hiding behind their equipment. 

"Oops?" Buffy said. 

"Is he dead? Oh god, I hope not. I can't deal with any more dead bodies right now..." Buffy said as she tried to look over the shoulders of the men carrying the stuntman into the ambulance. They stopped to stare at her and she quickly replied, "I'm from Sunnydale." The men nodded in understanding and quickly loaded the man who was, to her relief, groaning loudly. 

"Are you the girl who did that?" 

Buffy turned to see a tall man in his twenties with dark hair standing over him. The sun was directly behind him, so she couldn't see his face clearly. "Y-yes," she admitted. "Are they gonna you know, press charges?" 

The man started walking towards the crew and Buffy tagged along. "I don't think so. It clearly was an honest mistake. We _were_ kind of out of sight and we didn't cordon off the site. The director wants to talk to you, though." 

The director was a big, fat man with a bird's nest for hair and a weird accent. Xander, Willow, and Dawn were already there and ran to her. Dawn was giddy. 

"That," she said, "was awesome." 

"Your best work," Willow nodded. 

"Well, until the part where you ripped his mask off and he turned out to be human," Xander said. 

Buffy tried not to laugh. "I gotta talk to this director guy first. See how much damage-" 

"That was awesome!" The director boomed as he waddled over to greet Buffy. Buffy just stared and barely noticed when he shook her hand to introduce himself. "Buf-Buffy," she said quietly, still a bit confused. "So- so, I'm not in any trouble?" 

The director, whose name she didn't catch, laughed. "Of course, you are." He laughed again at the look on the girl's face. "But not if I can help it. The stuntmen have insurance. The only problem we have now is we don't have a replacement for the man you clobbered, and we're already behind in our schedule and budget. Would you believe the studio's still scrimping? On me? Do they even know who I am?" 

_I don't,_ Buffy thought, but just nodded along. 

"So," the fat man continued rambling, "if you don't happen to have twenty thousand dollars in your pocket right now, I don't think you'd be of any help." 

"I- I have..." Buffy dug in her pocket and fished out a few coins. "Seventy three cents." 

The director smiled wryly and turned to his crew. "That's a wrap for today!" he yelled and the people started folding things up right away. 

"No, wait," Buffy took the director's arm and he turned to her in surprise when he found that he couldn't move. "What if I did the stunts? You won't have to pay me." 

"You won't fit in the costume." 

"I would," Xander walked up to them. 

"And- and I could do _her_ stunts," Buffy chimed in, pointing at the woman she "saved." She was glaring at her from where she was seated. The director looked thoughtful. 

"You won't have to pay us," Buffy assured him. "And you'd be amazed at the things I can kill-" 

"Do," Dawn quickly corrected her sister. "The things she can _do._ You know, somersaults and flying kicks and all." The director still didn't look convinced. 

"She can lift two men at the same time," Willow said in her desperation and shocked the fat man too much without her meaning to. "She- she's freakishly strong that way." She quickly added. 

The four held their breaths as they waited for the director to make his decision. Dawn thought she was already turning blue when he looked up and said in a much quieter voice, "You know, there _was_ this part in a former version of the screenplay where I wanted the heroine, Sam, to leap from building to building and then land on top of a moving car. But Kate here, the actress who plays her, would hear nothing of it. And she wanted everyone to know that she did all her stunts." The director looked at Buffy questioningly. "Have you had some experience in something like that before, even just with rigging?" 

Dawn and Willow pinched Xander from both sides to keep him serious while they also tried not to laugh at their incredible luck, but Buffy's face still gave it all away. "Yeah," she said, "something like that." 

"And it's not about loneliness. It's certainly not restlessness. But I know it's just normal to think this way. Man went to the moon because of it. All the wonderful books I've read are the reason for it. I just don't understand why in this town, feeling like this seems so wrong. It's perfectly natural to wonder if there's something beyond all this, but I somehow feel guilty about even _thinking_ it. I know I belong here, but why can't I also belong somewhere else?" Elizabeth put her pen down, turned her lamp off, and tucked her diary away. She detached the charger from her cellular phone and turned it on. She had received four messages from him in the one hour she was gone. It was cute while they were still starting out, but now- 

_Don't even say it,_ she told herself. _You'll regret ever saying it if you do._ After sending back a short, friendly message, telling Todd she was going to bed early, she turned the phone off again and lay awake in bed. She was seventeen, she'd told herself a hundred times before, it was perfectly okay to feel confused and wanting to find out if there was more to life, if there was more than what she already knew about herself... if she was even right about what she thought she knew about herself. 

Walking back to her desk, she slid a window open and dangled her legs outside. She took a deep breath of the California night air. Why did she now hate its comforting salty weight? Why did she hate almost everything around her lately? Why did she suddenly feel discontented even with her boyfriend, annoyed even? 

_There must be something wrong with me,_ she thought. She had always been happy, content, at the top of her game. _I must be changing. It must be this teenage identity crisis kicking in late._ She gripped the windowsill tighter and looked down the surprisingly high drop from her room in their split-level bungalow. _But what was wrong with the world? _From some other part of the house, she heard the sound of the radio drift to her. It was the news again about that town that went Hiroshima. They still couldn't figure out what happened and how had the citizens been conveniently evacuated long before it happened. Probably her parents. The radio switched to some light rock now. Jessica. She was supposed to be the one person she could tell this to, but she had also been off these days. Her sister had been playing the radio louder and longer lately. Was it possible that she was feeling the same way? When Elizabeth made out the song that was playing, she felt that guilty, drowning feeling wash over her again and she clambered back into her room, shut the window firmly, and crawled under her covers. It was too late, though. The song was already in her room. The song was with her and wouldn't go away. No, she didn't want to cry. She didn't even know anymore if it was appropriate to cry at times like these. Instead, she just lay still in her dark room and didn't dare to move as she felt her heart being eaten away again. 

_Well there's a feelin' in the air  
Just like a Friday afternoon  
Yeah you can go there if you want  
Though it fades too soon  
So go on, let it be  
If there's a feelin' coming over me  
Seems like it's always understood this time of year_

_Well there's a football in the air  
Across the leaf-blown field  
Yeah, and there's your first car on the road  
And the girl you steal  
So go on, if you fell  
If there's a feelin' that there's somethin' else  
Seems like it's always understood this time of year_

"Oh man, I used to listen to that song over and over in my room," Dawn mumbled under the mess of hair that hid her head, which she had propped on the table. Buffy was stroking her hair lazily. Everybody was pooped from a day's work at the movie set and they were back in the same booth they had occupied that morning. 

"Good news," the tall guy from that afternoon walked in and slid into the booth with them. "He loved your work and he wants you to come back tomorrow at eight to discuss the script with you, see what other stuff he had to take out you could do, and if he's satisfied, he might give you a job. That is, if you want it." He slid a rather thick wad of bills across the table to Buffy. "Here's a down payment of some sorts so his favorite new find won't run off. Usually, it's checks like the rest of us, but he thought you guys looked like you... need this more right now." 

Buffy's eyes widened at the sight of the money on the table. "If I want it? If I want a job that pays this much?" She laughed. "I don't think we would even have money to pay for this dinner if you hadn't come." 

"You call this dinner?" He pointed to mess of plates and glasses that once held burgers, fries, and about half a dozen servings of milkshakes. "That's no good for the little squirt here." He patted Dawn on the top of her head. Dawn rolled her eyes and looked away. Her sister was still in shock about their unbelievable luck for that day that she didn't notice. 

"Tell Mister- um, tell him of course I'll do it," she said. She turned to Willow. "Why didn't we think of this, Willow?" 

"Because 'circus freak' was just hard to kick off your top five?" Xander asked. 

Buffy was too excited to take offense. "Oh my god, I have a job." 

Willow smiled. "Told you you would." 

"Yeah, but this soon?" Everyone in the booth laughed. Xander ordered another round of burgers for the road, knowing that they could afford it already. Giles had given them some of his money after he finally convinced Willow and Xander that he and Faith, and Andrew could take care of all the injured themselves and that what Buffy really needed right then was immediate cutoff from anything related to the Apocalypse, but they figured it would be enough for just a couple of days and half a tank of gas. Burgers for dinner was still scrimping, but it was better than learning Willow's meditation hoopla to divert your mind from the hunger. 

"Okay, since I think I've cheered everybody up, I'd just as well spill this one," the tall guy said. "Buffy, he really thinks you have something going on there, and it's more than just the stunts that you don't even think twice of doing. Usually, you need a license to do this, but he really doesn't want to let you go now. She thinks you might have real talent going on with you. So, he told me that if you last through this movie, he was wondering if you'd be interested in coming to Hollywood to work on more projects with him. What do you think about that, huh?" 

Buffy, to the guy's surprise and perplexity, only paled at the mention of Los Angeles. "I-" she stammered. "I- It's not- I can't." 

"Can't? You're turning down the offer of one of the biggest directors in the industry today?" 

"It's... personal. I'm sorry," Buffy gushed, embarrassed. "I'm so grateful that he even thought he saw talent in me and all that, but I have uh, issues with L.A. You- you know what I'm talking about. 

"Yeah, I think I do, I think I do. Pitching it to you was worth a try anyway." The guy stood to leave. "Well, I better get back to the set now, help them pack up for tonight. It was nice meeting you guys, Xander, Willow, Dawnie... Buffy." He shook their hands. 

Buffy stood to take his hand. "This- this is just great," Buffy couldn't stop grinning. "Thank you so much. And I'll see you tomorrow, I guess." The rest of the gang stood to leave as well. When they were at the door, he called Buffy again. 

"I just have a question," he said, clearly trying to make eyes with her. "What's 'Buffy' short for?" 

"Excuse me?" 

"I mean, what's your full name? 'Buffy's' short for what?" 

"No, I- It's just 'Buffy.'" She smiled shyly. 

"Oh, I'm sorry-" he looked down in embarrassment. "Well, I better- I better go before I say anything more stupid." 

"Yeah, me, too," Buffy said and ran out to catch up with her friends and sister who were already pulling out of the parking lot. 

Xander greeted her from behind Willow, who was driving, as Buffy climbed into the bus. "Where're you headed, miss?" 

"You going anywhere near Hawaii?" Buffy said, making her way to the back and letting Dawn lean on her shoulder to sleep. 

"You're in luck, little lady. Exactly where I'm headed," he called. "Hey, look at what I found while snooping through Old Yeller here: we got two packs of cigarettes, a pack of gum, pencils, condoms, somebody's math homework, somebody's fake ID, a contraband stereo and Playboys! Well, ladies, looks like we _are_ all set for the road." 

Buffy lay Dawn carefully down and walked to the front. "Turn the stereo on, Xander." The song from the diner filtered into the damp California night and nobody spoke for a while. 

_Well I know there's a reason to change  
Well I know there's a time for us  
Think about the good times and you live with all the bad  
You can feel it in the air  
Feelin' right this time of year_

_True, true, _Willow thought, silently wishing that the headlights of the bus were also brighter. She didn't know why, but she felt like she never wanted to be in the dark again. The past years had nearly all been about pain. Losing Tara to Glory, then because of her addiction, and then to irrevocable Death itself. Losing Buffy wasn't as painful and mortifying as finding out that she had spearheaded the efforts to snatch her friend from heaven. And now Sunnydale was also gone. She remembered when Xander talked her out of destroying the world. She remembered it was because with every "I love you" he said, he had unconsciously reminded her of all the times they were together, from childhood until that moment. And that had all happened in Sunnydale. It was true, she had never actually lived anywhere else, but in all the magical realms that had made her feel so powerful and so alive that she had gone to, she would never choose any of them over where she had grown up, met her best friends and found her destiny. Sunnydale, which sat above the Hellmouth, had been the cradle of all dark and demonic activity for years and she wasn't saying that it was good, developing a strong stomach from stumbling across hundreds of bodies through the years, but Sunnydale was so much more than that. She had destroyed it and it had destroyed their lives in turn, but it was undeniable: a mere giant crater or not, there was a Sunnydale in her heart that no one could destroy. 

_But it's all good. This new town should be as good as any,_ she assured herself, looking at Xander and Buffy chatting, Buffy teasing Xander by trying to look under his eye patch,_ Giving up the town, giving up Kennedy, it's still somehow going to turn out fine. I'm with my best friends with whom I built this Sunnydale in my memory. We can keep living in it anywhere._

"You know what I'd be doing this time of year?" Xander asked Buffy, swatting her hand from his eye patch for the hundredth time. 

"Having sex with Anya?" was her reply. 

"I can do that any time of the year, thank you," he said. "I was actually thinking about coming home to her and finding that she'd made me a feast. A disgusting, stinky feast with the occasional toad-parts, but still a feast." 

"And sex with Anya." 

"Yeah, and sex. Usually before dinner so I'd have an excuse to just lie down and not move anymore after that." Xander was glad Buffy was laughing again. He was also surprised at how well he was taking Anya's death. 

But Buffy wasn't so sure about that yet herself and just realized her mistake. "Oh, Xander, I'm so sorry about the jokes, I- Are you okay?" she asked. 

"Yeah," Xander replied. "I'm surprisingly okay. I don't- I don't- I miss her, but I don't- I'm just so proud of what she did. I'm not happy about it, but this feeling I had when Andrew said... She- she hadn't even been here that long and she stayed for the town. She stayed for the world. I still can't think of anything better to say than 'That's my girl.'" Buffy smiled knowingly. 

_Yeah, that's my girl. These are my girls,_ Xander grinned to himself, looking at Willow at the wheel, Dawn sleeping like a doll, and Buffy talking to him animatedly. Who would've thought such a weird gang was responsible for stopping more Apocalypses than anybody ever thought there would be? The Slayer, the Witch and the Zeppo, it used to be, but over the years, he found that being the only ordinary human in the group didn't necessarily translate to being the powerless and useless human. He knew that if it hadn't been for Buffy, they wouldn't be alive now, but he also knew that if it hadn't been for Sunnydale, he'd never know if he was doing the right thing with his life. And he couldn't picture himself doing anything different and being any happier than he was at that time, though he was just about as homeless and penniless as they came now. 

_Penniless shmenniless, it doesn't matter,_ Xander thought. _I've been there; I've done that, and I know, I just know, that everything's going to be looking up from now on. And when I'm ready, I'm going back and I'm going to know where the school and the Starbucks and the Magic Box and all the rest used to be, and I'm going rebuild Sunnydale with these two hands._

Jessica was pretty sure she was going out of her mind._How else could you explain all this happening to me if not that?_ She had told herself a million times already. In between the bouts of uncontrollable giddiness, that is. 

It was so strange, what she had been feeling lately, she wasn't even sure it was real. Just the other day at cheerleading practice she was overcome by such a great... she didn't know how to describe it. All she knew was she couldn't concentrate on any of the routines anymore, and that she desperately wanted out. So, with barely an apology to her co-captain, she ran out into the street in front of the school. When she got there, she didn't seem to want to stop, didn't even feel like she could stop. Jessica ran to the mall at the other end of town. When she got there, she realized all her mall buddies _were_ the cheerleaders, and that she still didn't want to stop running anyway, so she ran all the way home. 

"Exercise gives you endorphins; endorphins make you happy," she distinctly remembered Elle Woods say. 

"Well, thank god for endorphins, huh?" she yelled to no one in particular. Nobody could hear her anyway. She had turned the volume of her radio all the way up so no one would hear her on the trampoline in the middle of the night. If it weren't for the frigging endorphins or whatever was keeping her giddy, Jessica probably would have gone out of her mind. She didn't know how it started, or even when exactly. It just did, and then, like it had always been like this, she was overwhelmed by this feeling like there was something more out there and she should be somewhere else. She didn't even know where 'out there' was. All she knew was that she needed to get somewhere, anywhere, and at night... well, her parents now thought she was on something and she wasn't sure she really should deny it. Elizabeth, who was supposed to be the one person she could confide in, all of a sudden didn't seem to be a good idea. If there were anyone who had gotten weirder than her, it would be her usually levelheaded twin. Maybe it was just boyfriend problems, or maybe she was feeling the same way she was. 

"But what's the difference, eh, Jess?" she asked herself in between gasps for air, "You're nearly eighteen. If you can't handle this on your own, you'll never make it in the real world. You'll never make- You'll-" Jessica decided to stop talking altogether and just kept on bouncing, trying to block the song out of her mind. Tears would never come, no matter how hard she drove herself or how drained she would feel afterwards. Her feet were numb and her legs began to give way. A minute or so later, Jessica collapsed on the floor but didn't seem to feel a thing. She didn't seem to feel at all. The whole night through, she just stared at the ceiling and saw the stars through it. 

_Well there's a feelin' in the air  
Just like a Friday afternoon  
Yeah you can go there if you want  
Thought it fades too soon  
So go on, let it be  
If there's a feelin' comin' over me  
Seems like it's always understood this time of year_

"Are we there yet?" 

Buffy turned to see Dawn brush her hair out of her eyes and she hurried back to her younger sister. 

"Nearly there, Dawnie," Willow called from the front. 

Buffy sat beside Dawn and put her head on her lap. "We're nearly there, but you can still get some sleep," she said and stroked her long hair until she was asleep again. They really were nearly there. She could see the lights from the houses at the bottom of the hill. For the first time, the actual idea of starting their lives from scratch came upon her and she was suddenly frozen stiff. There were too many new things to deal with. Xander had found a cheap bungalow in the papers that they could probably afford if they all had jobs, but buying new furniture, clothes, supplies... and she wasn't even married yet. 

_It's going to be a different kind of Hell, but Hell still. But yeah, we're getting through this,_ Buffy thought. _Who says a bunch of life...starting problems are worse than losing your mother, your memory, your life and your mind? This should be a walk in the park for the Scoobies. And this is actually better than marriage since there are three of us making money. This is going to be fine, fine._

But she knew she really wasn't kidding anybody. She wished she were just back in her home in Sunnydale. She didn't care if she was already motherless, nearly raped, and resurrected from the dead. She felt, she somehow knew, that it all didn't matter. She knew that whatever fate threw at her, be it vampires, with souls and without, demons, Slayers, gods, or even Evil itself, she could take them all if she were in Sunnydale. Others might think it funny, but in the seven years that she had lived there, not once had she failed. Never had she given up. Death couldn't even stop her when she was in Sunnydale, protecting Sunnydale. For her, it was always going to be the safest place in the world. 

But so many things have changed in the past few days. The town was gone, the demons were gone, Anya was dead, Giles wanted them to leave and forget, start a new life, and Spike- She didn't know if they saw right through her a while ago in the diner when she turned down the offer from Hollywood just to avoid Los Angeles. She knew Angel would never be in her future, but she realized just how much she must have hurt Spike with every little thing she did then. And now that he was gone, now that she couldn't, she wanted to make it up to him. That, to her, included not betraying his memory by even going near Angel's. 

_We're going to make it in this town,_ Buffy felt Dawn's steady breathing on her leg and she leaned over to give her sister a kiss. _I'm starting a new life with the three people I trust mine with. That alone makes where we do it irrelevant. This town is as good as any, or as bad. It won't matter because we're together, and because..._ Buffy closed her eyes to sleep._ ...because either way, Spike won't be there._

_Well I know there's a reason to change (this time of year)  
Yeah I know there's a time for us (this time of year)  
Ya think about the good times, and you live with all the bad (this time of year)  
You can feel it in the air  
Feel it in the air  
Yeah I can feel it in the air  
Well I can feel it in the air  
Yeah you can feel it in the air  
Feelin' right this time of year_

Buffy felt Willow approaching and woke up before she even got to her to shake her awake. 

"We're here," Willow said. 

Buffy looked out the window. They were on the side of the road, but it still looked like they were on the highway. "We're where?" 

"Oh," Willow smiled at her mistake. "I meant, we're just outside the town. Xander just realized we know nothing about the law and whether taking this bus to save our lives is also um, stealing. He thinks we better leave it here outside the town and just walk the rest of the way." She helped wake Dawn up and let her get off ahead. 

"You ladies ready?" Xander climbed back into the bus to fetch them. 

"What time is it?" Buffy asked. 

"Has that ever stopped you?" Xander kidded her. Looking out the windows, the three saw the lights from the houses and tiny people moving around in them. It only made their new mission all the more real, and Buffy's voice got caught in her throat. 

Willow said what was in everybody's mind, anyway. "We're really doing this." 

"We can do this," Xander said firmly. 

"We- we'll all get jobs, send Dawn back to school, maybe send _me_ back to school after a few years, Buffy will be stuntwoman extraordinaire, and- and Xander will be foreman in a year..." 

"Why does it sound so much scarier than 'We're going to save Xander from a giant praying mantis or a life-sucking Inca mummy girl' or 'We've got to get away from Willow gone Wicked Witch of the West' or 'Buffy didn't come out right and is now sleeping with another vamp' or 'We're going to save the world from the First Evil and his army of a million demons?'" Buffy and Willow poked him in the ribs and they walked out with Xander's arms around them. 

"Well! That's enough drama for one day," Xander clapped and rubbed his palms together and took Dawn's hand. "Read or not, here we come," he said as the four walked into the night, past the sign that said, "Welcome to beautiful Sweet Valley, California." 

Song credit: "This Time of Year" by Better Than Ezra

© Andie Genovese 2002 - 2003


End file.
